Trade chief: Exports prices to stabilize
By Jiang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-03-22 07:21

China will standardize export prices while guaranteeing quality, the country's top trade official said yesterday at the 2005 China Development Forum.

Chinese Trade Minister Bo Xilai speaks at the 2005 China Development Forum March 21, 2005. [newsphoto]

"The government will take measures to standardize the exports of our most competitive products, particularly low and medium-end items, in a bid to maintain their export prices at a steady level," said Bo Xilai, the commerce minister.

The minister said the country's policies would fully respect the developing rights of enterprises.

Such measures aim to deal with the possible trade conflicts expected to occur in trade with other countries as China becomes deeper involved in the world economy.

Having encountered an increasing number of trade conflicts in recent years, including the shoe-burning case in Spain and the recent dispute concerning footwear exports to Russia, China has been seen by some as a victim of global trade disputes.

But the minister said this also indicated the Chinese Government had imposed little administrative interference on enter-prises.

"Trade conflicts, such as dumping and anti-dumping, are inevitable for China in international trade," said Bo.

He added: "We will handle them in accordance with rules stipulated by the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in line with our commitments to the WTO."

Bo said controlling measures had been adopted on China's textile exports, an issue that sparked "wild concerns" on international market.

An exhibition stand of a cashmere sweater company. The Ministry of Commerce announced on March 21, 2005 a list of major exportrs of Chinese products which will get support from the ministry. [newsphoto]

Since all quotas on textiles between all WTO members were eliminated from the start of this year, some countries are now worried made-in-China textiles might flood their markets and hurt their domestic economies. "The Chinese Government and the textiles industry have adopted a series of methods to control textile exports of the country to ease their concerns," said the minister.

As for the Sino-US trade, the minister said bilateral trade between the two countries continued to expand at a stable track.

Some officials and experts in the United States are worried China's great trade surplus with the US might see severe conflicts this year. "The considerable gap between the two countries' trade figures mainly result from the different calculating method," Bo said.

In addition, he said China's trade surplus did not necessarily mean only Chinese exporters benefited from bilateral trade between the two countries.

Bo said: "The profit US importers earned from the bilateral trade" far exceeded that of Chinese exporters.

Chinese commodities greatly lowered the costs for US consumers, he said, adding: "In fact, a great amount of the surplus came from foreign-invested companies."

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